5 ways a second Trump administration would be different from the first

CNN —

A little more than a month before the Iowa caucuses, a Republican political operative was sitting in a Washington bar ticking through the dynamics of his party’s presidential primary.

A veteran of campaigns across more than two decades of election cycles, he weighed the strengths of the winnowing list of Republican contenders and the potential risks of nominating a former president staring down four indictments and dozens of criminal charges.

He didn’t hedge in his conclusion.

“One thing that hasn’t changed: This is Trump’s party,” the operative said. But he wanted to make clear that didn’t mean a second term for Donald Trump would replicate the first.

“Everything around him has changed,” he said of the former president. “To his benefit.”

Six months later, Trump is indeed the presumptive Republican nominee.

He’s also now a convicted felon.

But several other factors have served to validate the operative’s overarching point.

Republicans have universally closed ranks in support of their nominee.

Trump’s campaign said it raked in $53 million in the 24 hours after his conviction in his New York hush money trial for falsifying business records – an astounding amount for a single day as donors big and small shelled out in response to a wave of fundraising appeals citing the verdict.

The former president’s pledges to pursue political revenge in a second term have escalated and have been met by supporters with tacit acceptance or outright encouragement.

Trump loyalists in the latter camp aren’t just amplifying the idea of targeting political opponents.

For more than a year, they’ve actively explored legal theories and drafted policy proposals to deliver on Trump’s wishes.